Colemans at Wrigley, and more

Phew, what a whirlwind! Day Two of our one and a half in Chicago ended sometime around 11 p.m. when we finally got out of Wrigleyville. Although we had to leave the ballpark in the top of the 11th, hey, we had three kids happy (despite the look on Robert's face, promise) up until that time. With the Cubs-Cardinals game tied and no end necessarily in sight, we walked. The go-ahead run came up as we left Wrigley and the noise of Cardinals fans was deafening.

Robert was very much into this ballgame, rooting hard for the Cubs because we had Cardinals fans behind us. They loved the kids, especially Robert wearing his Joe Mauer jersey. I had thought perhaps he would not be the only person in Wrigley Field last night in a Mauer jersey, although I don't know that for a fact. (We did see a bunch of Twins hats and shirts and one Denard Span jersey.)

Earlier in the day we attended Mass at Nanny and Pa's parish in Niles, Ill., where Nonna and Da were married. We visited Nanny's grave, the first time for any of the kids, none of whom were alive when she died in 1997. That was followed by a trip downtown to go to the top of the Sears Tower (Robert refused to call it by its new name, the Willis Tower, and they were still selling Sears Tower memorabilia). The kids were great with the hour-plus wait in line. Colleen was a little scared but not so scared she wouldn't go up to the windows and look out.

Plus we had found a free parking spot on the street just two blocks from the tower.

It took us a while to get to a spot on the beach -- where does one park to get to the lake? We drove around a lot and finally found another free spot on the street. We did well on parking early in the trip, which made the $20 we paid to park near Wrigley more bearable. So we had to walk three-quarters of a mile to get there, in flip-flops, not a problem. Unfortunately, because of high levels of bacteria, they were not allowing people in the water. Robert was bummed out about it but got over it by eating one of the best cheeseburgers he's ever tasted. (He got one fresh off the grill because the ones already cooked and wrapped all had tomato on them. The kid behind the counter wanted me to just pull the tomato off. I told him my son was allergic.)

They also built sand castles with the John Hancock tower in the background. Colleen was sad when we had to leave, but not for long. We also saw no fewer than five rabbits on the lawn of apartment buildings along Lake Shore Drive on the walk back to the car.

The ballgame was a great time, too. Everyone got free T-shirts (I saw another fan wearing theirs when I stopped to get the kids into the bathroom somewhere between Des Plaines and Rockford.) Colleen didn't ask "when is it done?" until the sixth inning or so, and didn't make life too miserable when she was trying to take a nap in the ninth and 10th. Robert got very upset when Colleen was rooting for the Cardinals, following the crowd behind us.

Other highlights.

• Colleen was a great walker, all weekend. I put the stroller in the trunk but never pulled it out.
• Colleen sang every word and every note of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. Better than Notre Dame football coach Brian Kelly did, if you ask me.
• Driving down Waveland about an hour before game time and just watching the crowd.
• Robert letting Elizabeth use his camera pretty much all weekend without a complaint. She made use of the panoramic feature, including the shot at the end of this post of Wrigley about a half-hour before game time. Click the image for a bigger version.
  
• The giardiniera at Wrigley, immediately made me wish I'd gotten the Italian beef sandwich instead of the sausage, but I put it on anyway. Nice and hot.
• We couldn't get down the Obamas' street on our visit to the Hyde Park neighborhood. Blocked off by Secret Service.
  
• Elizabeth was a trooper, a couple of times, especially taking Colleen to the ladies room in a couple of key circumstances while I either had to stay in a line or stay with the car.
• The trip home was pleasantly uneventful. A special shout-out goes to the nearly full moon, which was bright and helped keep fatigue away until the pre-dawn light took over in the final hour of the drive.
  
• The kids slept all the way. And then for five more hours after we got home and poured ourselves into bed.
  

The perfect capper to a long day

At about 10 p.m. last night, Elizabeth came into our room and handed me a tooth. It had been loose for a while, no worries, but just figured it was the only way our pretty packed Sunday could end.

No money under her pillow. Like Santa Claus, something we don't really subscribe to. We did the rewards when she was younger.

Robert still has yet to lose a tooth. He's at the dentist, now, though, with one tooth really wiggling and another pushing it out. Like with the bicycle, he's afraid of the pain, so he won't eat on that side of his mouth and won't eat corn on the cob at all.

Of course, none of this compares to Saturday. Sunday was supposed to be the easy day, while Saturday we started the day with a Bloomington Chorale concert at the farmer's market in Bloomington and finished with a family get-together because Aunt Kathleen and Uncle Jim were in town from New Hampshire. That and I left in the middle to go sing at 5 p.m. Mass and returned later. Sunday was just supposed to be the golfing. And just ours, not Tom Watson's.

Tee for two

Well, I wish I could drive like Cate, and I think Cate wishes she could putt like I do. And that was the upshot of our first husband-wife full golf outing, part of a pretty packed Sunday this weekend.

As I said when Cate and Jennifer went golfing a couple of weeks ago, we haven't been golfing together since a pitch-and-putt outing sometime in the mid-1990s. And by full outing, I mean nine holes of a par-three course, but hey, it was time outside and without the kids.

I only had two holes of my personal nightmare. I've always feared I would be unable to make solid contact with the ball and would end up dribbling the ball up the fairway 20 yards at a time. Then Cate gave me a couple of pointers (oh, you mean I shouldn't stand centered over the ball?) and I finished with a par and back-to-back double bogeys. Hey, for us that was a high point. We each parred the 71-yard sixth hole, and Cate bogeyed the opening hole, but other than that it was fairly dismal. We finished one stroke apart; definitely would consider it beginner's luck.

Stuck behind a fivesome that included a 3-year-old, it took us just about two hours to play the nine holes. But the kid could swing and had at least one drive off the tee that was better than mine. Made for a lot of waiting, though.

Thanks, of course, to Neil and Alicia (again) for the use of their clubs and Kyle and Jennifer for watching the little ones. And there's one more Pretty Packed Sunday post to come, probably on my lunch break.

He's got a ticket to ride

Robert wasn't, shall we say, the most enthusiastic learner of the ins and outs riding a bike. I guess in the end many kids aren't. I mean, who likes falling off and skinning their knee, right?

To add insult to potential injury, the bike we've had Robert practicing on isn't exactly the best suited for a barely 7-year-old. It's probably a bike he would be riding next summer, even the summer after. It's tall and it's heavy. But he's been a gamer and this afternoon he finally got it. I mean, it has a hand brake and a coaster brake.

By got it, I mean he rode the bike by himself, four houses before coming to a relatively controlled stop. He rode it so far that I had the chance to come out from running alongside him and ran backwards out ahead of him.

We had been up and down the level section of the block in front of the house three or four times already and he was getting kind of tired of the process before I pulled out the card I was hoping I wouldn't have to play -- his friend, Cate Jensen, learned to ride her two-wheeler earlier this week and we were about to take him and Colleen over there for a play date.

"She's going to be very proud she can ride her bike. You're one more trip up the block away from being able to say that yourself. Wouldn't you like to be able to say you can, too?"

Bingo. And he had a good time at the Jensens, too, from all I've heard.

Congratulations, Robert!

We don't have photos or video from today, but here's a clip of a previous attempt.